iOS five times as popular as Android for Christmas shopping on mobile!

In something of a repeat of 2012 when the iPad crushed Android tablets in Black Friday mobile revenue, this time around U.S. shoppers used their iPhone, iPod touch and iPad gadgets to racket up a whopping five times the amount of mobile Christmas Day sales as Android devices did, accounting for more than an 83 percent take of mobile-oriented sales compared to Google’s mobile platform.

That’s the gist of yesterday’s survey by IBM providing insights into the nation’s mobile holiday shopping patterns. Read on for the full breakdown…

According to IBM’s annual Digital Analytics Benchmark, overall Christmas Day online sales were up 16.5 percent over the same period last year, with mobile traffic and sales showing the highest gain “we’ve seen over this holiday season”, accounting for 48 percent of all online traffic, up 28.3 percent compared to the same period last year.

Mobile sales also remained strong, approaching 29 percent of all online sales, up 40 percent over 2012, the survey noted. IBM polled mobile shoppers using its “digital analytics platform that tracks millions of transactions and analyzes terabytes of raw data from approximately 800 retail sites nationwide”.

In terms of the iOS vs. Android comparison, Apple’s platform attracted five times the sales of Android. Specifically, nearly one-quarter of all Christmas Day online sales originated from iOS devices versus a meager 4.6 percent Android share.

If you just look at mobile-oriented sales, iOS was responsible for a commanding 83 percent share. IBM pegged overall online traffic from iOS devices at 32.6 percent versus 14.8 percent for Android.

Researchers added:

On average, iOS users spent $93.94 per order, nearly twice that of Android users, who spent $48.10 per order.

Tablets were more popular for holiday shopping than smartphones, representing the 19.4 percent vs. 9.3 percent share of online purchases – despite just 18.1 percent of Christmas Day online traffic occurring on tablets (28.5 percent on smartphones).

The average per-tablet sale amounted to $95.61 versus the $85.11 average purchase made from a smartphone. As for platforms other than iOS and Android, Microsoft’s Windows Phone, BlackBerry and others didn’t even blip on IBM’s radar.

I guess this data point will make for a nice slide at one of Apple’s upcoming keynotes.

Web analytics firm Chitika similarly found back in July that iOS accounted for a cool 84 percent share of web traffic on tablets, which helps explain Apple’s commanding 83 percent take of the 2013 Christmas Day online sales.

Last year, IBM found that 24 percent of online shoppers did their holiday shopping on a mobile device, with Apple’s gadgets dominating Black Friday online shopping.